City of Angels

by Christa Wolf, translated from the German by Damion Searls (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Billed as a novel, this work by one of the leading literary figures of East Germany is more like a journal—with a digressive, quotidian pace and recognizably autobiographical content. In 1992-93, Wolf, who died in 2011, was a fellow at the Getty Center, and a narrator much like Wolf explores Los Angeles and mourns her lost country in the wake of Communism’s collapse. She busies herself with acquaintances and tourism, and records American perspectives on race and Communism. The real action comes when the news breaks in Germany that she was an “informal collaborator” with the Stasi. The narrator responds with disbelief. Wolf uses the image of Freud’s overcoat as a metaphor for memory’s instability: “the coat that keeps you warm but also hidden, that you have to turn inside out.” The text is often slow-moving, but Searls’s excellent translation effectively conveys Wolf’s wordplay. ♦

Sign up to get the best of The New Yorker delivered to your inbox every day